My biggest project yet - a rear blade.

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The first project I was going to build when I got my tractor was a rear blade. As many of you may have noticed, it didn't turn out that way. Finally I have completed it and for those who might be interested, here is the story ....

First shot is of some of the raw materials. The blade itself I got along with the old Ford 9N I bought a few years ago. It appears to be homebuilt but is done quite nicely and is fairly heavy. The rest are just a few of the raw steel bits I bought at the local steel vendor.

 

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Here I've done a little bit of cutting and layed some of the pieces out to help me plan things out in my head. I had a general idea of what I was going to do but mainly made it up as I went along (my favorite way to do things).

 

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Another angle of the initial layout. You can see the main beam has been cut out to fit the large diameter pipe. I just traced around the pipe and free-handed the cut with my plasma cutter as close to the line as I could. A bit of grinder work finished it up for a nice fit.

 

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Normally I am a bit reluctant to hide bolts inside something where you can't get at them, but in this case I relented. The 3pt pins needed to stick out of the ends of a piece of round pipe and it just didn't seem right to cut open the pipe enough to get at the nuts. I made some round pieces of flat bar and bolted AND welded the pins in place. I also machined a small shoulder in the pieces, mainly to help hold them in place while I welded them on the ends of the pipe, but I think being slightly recessed into the pipe ends will also add some strength.

 

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Here's an end cap welded in place (a bit fuzzy - sorry). I almost forgot to make sure the lynch pin holes were lined up the way I wanted. Remembered before welding luckily.

 

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The main beam parts all stuck together. The horizontal pipe was fitted to the main beam the same was as the larger piece of pipe. Trace around the pipe where I wanted it and a bit of plasma cutter and angle grinder action. I also bevelled the edges of all the cutouts to leave a bit of a 'V' to weld into along the seam, hopefully creating a stronger weld.

 

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For the top link attachment I more or less copied my JD landscape rake. I needed to make two identical pieces and didn't want it to look too square and clunky, so a cardboard template proved useful.

 

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Almost a full evening of playing with the plasma cutter, bandsaw, grinder, and hole saw yeilded these pieces. This was the point I started to question what I had gotten into with this project. My back and feet were sore and a few hours of work only produced these two pieces. Basically it just takes some time and effort to cut and shape 1/4" and 3/8" thick material (which most of this project uses).

 

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The two pieces I just made will sit something like this ...

 

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I'm a believer in eyeballing things where it makes sense. I don't mean standing back and going "hmm... good enough", but rather pick a reference point or edge and line something up with it by sight. In this case I wanted the top link pin holes to be centered above the horizontal pipe and of course they had to be parallel to it. The string and weight let me know when the holes were directly above the pipe centerline and the solid bar inserted through the holes is where the 'eyeballing' came in. Standing above the assembly, with your head in just the right position, you can get the edge of the solid bar and the edge of the lift arm attachment pipe to line up. Any misalignment is very obvious and with a little practice you can align things extremely accurately using this method.

 

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After welding the parts in place, an oxy-acetylene torch assisted with making the required bends.

 

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Again copying my landscape rake, I added a reinforcement bar at an angle to the uprights. I could have attached it to the uprights at a lower position. This way it looks a little goofy because it has to narrow down so much to fit the close-together end of the uprights. Oh well ...

 

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Time to make sure it fits the tractor.

 

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Now on to the blade itself. You have probably figured out that the short, large diameter piece of pipe on the end of the main beam is where the blade will hang and pivot. There needs to be a corresponding pipe sticking up from the blade itself. This is that piece, with a piece welded in the end which has 1/2" nuts welded on the back side of it. Their use will become clear in the next picture.

 

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This is how the blade will hang from the main beam. The pipes fit together, with a stopper ring welded to the blade-side pipe as a lower stop,and a cap bolted on the top. The inner pipe is already tacked to the blade in this picture, but it was a bit of a nuisance to get it lined up.

 

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This is how I did it. I got the main beam set to just the right height and nicely levelled in all directions and dropped the inner pipe through the end of it. I then hung the blade from an engine hoist and tweaked it until it was level and just touching the vertical pipe. When everything was OK, I tacked it in place with the welder.

 

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To complete the attachment of the pipe to the blade, I welded more heavily where I had tacked it earlier and then added a couple of horizontal support plates. The extra support plates spread forces out along the top and bottom of the blade where it is already reinforced with heavy angle iron. In this picture you can also see a pin I added to the top edge of the blade. This is where the hydraulic angle cylinder will ultimately attach. There will be a lot of force on this pin, so I drilled out a piece of plate, inserted the bar through it and welded both top and bottom. The plate was then attached to the top edge of the blade.

 

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Here is a side view of how everything fits together.

 

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Back to the 3pt hitch end. I added brackets for the other end of the angle cylider and a parking stand.

 

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Finally getting close to the end. Here is everything put together. I don't have any rear hydraulic outlets on my tractor yet, so for now I will just hold the blade in position with a fixed bar. The angle cylinder mounts are 26" from pin to pin, which works out nicely for a 14" stroke cylinder available at a local farm supply store. I probably could have moved the mounts closer to the pivot point and used a smaller cylinder, but this way there will be less force on everything and the cylinders are not that much different in price.